fcs 2400 Families and social policy

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fcs 2400Families and social policy
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Public frustration about government spending

• What kind of families do we want to promote?
• Family wage
• Welfare state

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History of state intervention into family
affairs--Coontz

• Self-reliance and the American west.
• Little house on prairie or considerable help from
  uncle Sam
• Louisiana purchase in 1803 Confiscation of
  Mexico and native American lands 200 million
  for canals from coast to Ohio and Mississippi
• Self-reliance and the suburban family.
• GI bill and college, homesavailable to over 40
  of men in 1940s Privatization of wartime
  industry FHAVA only asked for a 1 down most
  often 1947, GOV built 37,000 miles of road
  connecting suburbs to cities

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What is Family Policy

• A perspective to study policies that affect
  families?
• No more than general policy?
• At what level should government be involved in
  family life?
• Marriage?
• Taxes?
• Reproductive rights?

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Antipoverty programs Have they worked?
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Have antipoverty programs worked?

• NO! Charles Murray
• We tried to provide more for the poor and
  produced more poor instead. We tried to remove
  the barriers to escape poverty, and inadvertently
  built a trap.
• When reforms finally do occur, they will happen
  not because stingy people have won, but because
  generous people have stopped kidding themselves
• It is now accepted that the social programs of
  the 1960s broadly failed that gov is clumsy and
  ineffectual when it intervenes in local life and
  the principles of personal responsibility,
  penalties for bad behavior, and rewards for good
  behavior have to be introduced into social
  policy.

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Unintended Consequences of Social Policy

• If the gov wants to change a person's behavior,
  paying that person to change will not work.
• For example, smoking
• Gov promised to pay people who had smoked for
  five years 10,000 to quit. What are the
  implications of the program?

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Have antipoverty programs worked?

• Maybe?

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Rebecca Blank It Takes A Nation two types of
mistakes

• Public misperceives the cost
• Critics do not look at the full range of
  effectsbenefits and costs- that programs
  generate
• They use the wrong yardstick to measure success

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So how should we regard recent efforts at
fighting poverty?What are we talking about
anyway

• Cash assistance programs AFDC, SSI (elderly or
  disabled below certain income cutoffs)
• In Kind Programs Food Stamps. Medicaid.
  Housing assistance
• Employment subsidy programs EITC, minimum wage
• Other non means tested -SS, unemployment,
  veterans benefits, workman's compensation,
  Medicare, state run programs such as foster care.

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Examplesemployment subsidy programs

• EITC Now Lifts More Children out of Poverty than
  Any Other Program. 2.4 mil children out of
  poverty in 199637.3 of all children moved out
  of poverty by government programs that year.

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EITCA tax credit for low-income working families
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The EITC is a refundable tax credit
Jane raises one child on her own, earned
7.50/hour in 2003
Janes tax calculation
15,600 adjusted gross income
- 7,000 standard deduction (head of household)
- 6,100 exemptions (herself and child)
2,400 taxable income
EITC 2,248
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Government Benefits Lift Families Out of Poverty
Source Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
U.S. Census Bureau